(A/N) As always, praise be unto all my lovely followers. If you guys haven't seen it yet, I actually wrote a little one shot companion piece for these stories that's up over in the Captain America section, if you're at all interested. Also, before we begin, if you listen in on Fury's conversations with the council in the movie, one of them sounds to be Russian, so I think what happens here is totally plausible. Little things.

To Have and To Hold

Chapter 4: Dearly Beloved

In the middle of the fifth month of her pregnancy, Natasha Romanoff was long sick of being off active duty. In fact, she was bored right out of her skull. She knew it was all for the best, of course, but she couldn't deny she missed the thrill of a good fight, the exhilaration of the hunt…but her work clothes had become just a little too tight as her stomach had started to swell. It wasn't very big yet, but it was big enough; and somehow, in spite of everything, the baby had continued to thrive in what Natasha was certain must be a very hostile environment. Clint and Pepper had turned out to be right; JARVIS had determined just yesterday that the baby was a girl. While she and Clint hadn't decided on a name yet, they had decided it wouldn't be safe for their daughter to share either of their surnames, so she would be called Romanova, Natasha's original surname.

Currently, Natasha was sitting in on one of Fury's sessions with the council, which had never happened to her before, but according to the director, the council had asked for her. There didn't seem to be any particular reason why so far.

Of the four of them, three had done the talking thus far: an American man, a British woman, and an Asian man. The fourth, though, whom she couldn't help but think looked somewhat familiar, had been silent the entire time. He was a balding man, and he looked Russian from what she could see of him, but she wouldn't know anything more specific until he actually spoke.

"So…let me see if we've understood you," the American said. "The Roswell cargo was found to be reactive with alien materials, more specifically with Agent Barnes' mechanical prosthetic?"

"That's so," Fury said stiffly, knowing none of these bastards needed to hear the information again. They just liked to watch him twist.

"And this information was kept off official S.H.I.E.L.D. record. Why?"

"Because we've got nothing else to go on. A simple reaction isn't much to work with," the director lied. If their plans for the Tesseract were any indication, he shuddered to think what they could do with the reaction recorded in New Mexico, and somehow Fury didn't think Steve would appreciate him selling his fiancée down the river into weapons development. Whether they believed it or not, Nick Fury looked out for his people.

"As we understand the situation, it was far more than a simple reaction," the Brit pointed out. "I understand it might have taken Agent Barnes' life were he not an adept magic user."

"Probably true," Fury said, reminding himself to find out where these guys were getting their information from.

"So why isn't this avenue being pursued?" the American asked.

"Remember the part where Agent Barnes nearly died? That prosthetic isn't just a piece of tech; it's part of him. We can't ask him to just tear pieces off of it so we can experiment."

"Well…perhaps experimentation to see if there's a way to duplicate the reaction with terrestrial materials?" he suggested.

"That's a good idea. Waltz up to the one S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who's undergone experimentation and torture at the hands of HYDRA and the Nazis and ask him if we can play with his body. Yeah, good luck with that, council members."

"Director Fury, are you refusing to allow this council access to Agent Barnes?" the woman asked.

"Not…refusing, no," Fury said lightly. "Just warning you. If you want James Barnes, you're gonna have to go through Captain America, not S.H.I.E.L.D., and if you even casually threaten his fiancée's safety, well…I really just can't guarantee Captain Rogers' continued loyalty to this organization."

"Where is Agent Barnes now?" the Asian man asked.

"Richmond, I believe. He, the captain, and Agent Barton are currently responding to a threat from a terrorist organization claiming to be the defunct HYDRA."

"And they'll be off-duty soon?" the American asked.

"Fairly…assuming everything's going well," Fury said, not liking the direction this was going.

"In that case, you will inform us the moment Agent Barnes returns to the Helicarrier," the woman said.

"Sure," Fury said, meaning he would more likely warn the soldier pair to make themselves scarce for a while. "I take it we're done here," he said, not waiting for the council's permission before turning to head out of the conference room with Natasha close behind.

"Not you, Agent Romanoff," the fourth voice broke in the moment Fury was outside the door, but Natasha was not. The Black Widow froze like the proverbial deer in the headlights upon hearing the voice. Fury only had time to turn and see the horrified look on his agent's face before the door snapped closed between them.

"Romanoff?" Fury called, keying in the code to open the door, but not all that surprised when it didn't work. "Romanoff, do you copy?" he started to shout into his comm, pounding a fist against the sealed door. "Romanoff!"

Natasha could hear him, but she couldn't quite respond. Struggling to mask the terror she knew must be in her eyes, she turned to face the screens again. The other three had gone dark, leaving only the last one lit, and she could see his face clearly now. He was older, and there had been a lot of plastic surgery done since she'd last seen him, but she still knew his face…his voice. She could never forget, no matter how badly she wanted to.

"Hello, my dear little Tasha."

"You," she whispered. "You can't be…you're dead."

"Did you really think you could destroy me so easily, Natasha? I did create you, after all."

Grigori Drakoff. The head of the Red Room Project. The man who had created her as surely as her own father had.

Drakoff's daughter.

XxX

The situation on the ground in Richmond was no less crazy. Four men had shown up in the city laying claim to the name HYDRA and sporting weapons powered by what they had all come to affectionately call Roswell Slime.

Clint and the WWII vets had managed to draw the fight away from the city, but the more open ground left them less opportunity for cover. Clint was in the process of firing a volley of exploding arrows at the man he was covering when Natasha's distraught voice sounded in his earpiece.

"Clint…he's here."

"I'm a little busy, Nat. What the Hell's going on up there?"

"It's him. Clint…he's not dead. We were wrong. He's here."

Oh, God.

XxX

"Fury! What the fuck's going on up there?! Talk to me, damn it!"

"I don't know!" Fury shouted back at the angry marksman in his earpiece. "Something sealed Natasha into the conference room. She's not talking. Are you getting something from her?"

"Nick…it's Drakoff."

"Fuck," the director hissed, not thinking to question for one minute that one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s longtime adversaries was not dead, as had previously been thought.

"Drakoff…and she's alone in there with him. You've gotta do something."

"Doing. I've got half the damn bridge working to get this thing open and we've got nothing short of blowing it, and we both know we can't risk that."

"We'll clean up down here and get back. These guys aren't so tough," Clint said, going for his usual cavalier attitude in order to mask how truly worried he was.

XxX

Clued into what was going on through their own earpieces, Bucky and Steve understood Clint's urgency to get back to the carrier, even though they didn't entirely understand what was happening.

Steve had taken a bad hit to his left leg early in the fight, so Bucky was covering for him. Between them, the two soldiers were covering three of the terrorists, and the first one to get within ten feet of them took a bullet right between the eyes.

Moving in circles, the two stood back to back, fighting as one. While Bucky kept his sights on one, Steve kept an eye out for the other, who seemed to have disappeared.

"Make a move, punk," Bucky hissed under his breath as his adversary circled them at a distance. Then, suddenly, he was running forward in a full frontal assault that had zero chance of success. Bucky easily took him out, but the moment he fired the shot, the second man appeared almost from nowhere and barreled right into him, tackling him to the ground. Immediately, his assailant latched onto a bit of paneling in his mech arm, tearing it free. As Bucky cried out in pain, Steve was already in motion, sending his shield on a collision course with the terrorist's neck. The man's spinal cord was severed before he could even scream.

"Are you all right?" Steve asked, quickly rushing to his lover's side.

"It's fine," Bucky said as he retrieved the broken piece of his arm from his assailant's dead fingers. "Nothing Stark can't fix."

"Okay. If you're all right here, I'm gonna help Barton with this last guy."

"Go get 'em, Cap."

XxX

"What do you want?" Natasha asked, standing tall before the video screen, even though what she really wanted to do was dissolve in a weeping mess.

"My lovely Black Widow, you didn't honestly think you could just crush my life's work and then walk away unscathed, did you? You never escaped me. I've always been watching over you. You are, after all, my greatest creation. But the phoenix has risen from the ashes you left us in all those years ago. We are stronger than we ever were before…and I mean to make you pay for what you did."

"Stronger?" Natasha pressed. "In your partnership with HYDRA, you mean?"

"Just so. Our two groups have had a very…mutually beneficial relationship thus far, and we are soon to reap the benefits of that relationship."

"What sort of benefits?"

"Your child, for one," he started right off the bat. "Your little girl will be the first in a new breed of Red Room agent."

"Like Hell are you touching her," Natasha snarled, hand going to her gun, more out of a sense of comfort than actually thinking it would help anything. "You'll have to come through me, Clint, the other Avengers, and S.H.I.E.L.D. if you want her."

"But S.H.I.E.L.D. is what will make it all possible."

"What do you mean?"

"No, no, no, no," Drakoff chided her. "That's for you to find out. Besides, I think your baby's father will be fairly easy to go through."

"Do you think you can scare me? He's worth ten of your agents. He won't be taken out so easily."

"Perhaps he was worth ten of the old model, and I don't think I can scare you; I know it. After all, who knows you better than I do? I know exactly what buttons to press to turn you to me."

"The only way I'm going back to you is over my own rotting corpse."

"No…over your friends' rotting corpses, because that's exactly how this is going to play out."

"If this is supposed to be intimidating, you need to work on your tactics," Natasha lied. "I've faced down gods. You're not exactly scary by comparison." Utter bullshit, of course. Natasha knew exactly what this man was capable of. He wasn't grossly overconfident or any kind of grandiose as Loki had been. The absolute right of his own decisions and the certainty of his own superiority were simply facts to him…like gravity or the Earth's orbit around the sun. He was truly dangerous.

"You lie so well, my Widow. It's probably the only thing that's kept you alive this long. Tell me, does he know you don't really love him? Does your archer know you aren't even capable of love?"

"If you think I-" Natasha's voice suddenly died in her throat and her hand drifted to her belly. Something was kicking gently against the inside of her stomach. It was the first time she'd ever felt the little one move. In truth, she'd been starting to worry about it. Jane's little boy moved pretty much constantly, but this baby had never moved. Were it not for JARVIS constantly reassuring her the child was healthy, she might have thought she was already dead. Drakoff began to chuckle at the look on her face.

"I can see you need some time alone with your thoughts. We'll talk again soon…but Natasha, please don't delude yourself into thinking you have the capacity to care for either of them. It will only make things more difficult in the end. You-"

Before he could finish, Natasha whipped out her gun and shot out the screen, feeling a twinge of satisfaction as she watched his face splinter and devolve into static. As she sank to her knees, the door finally slid open, admitting Fury and several other agents. Fury immediately swept over to her and knelt in front of her.

"Natasha?" he asked urgently, guiding her face up to look at him. "Natasha, look at me. You all right?"

"Yeah," she answered, though she shook slightly.

"What happened?"

"Drakoff," she whispered, nodding vaguely at the destroyed screen. "Couldn't get anything useful from him, so I got rid of him."

"You did good, Romanoff," he said, resting a hand on her shoulder. "We're gonna get you to a medic, ASAP. I know you don't need it," he continued before she could argue, "but we at least need to make sure the kid's all right."

"Yeah…yeah…fine," she said, allowing Sharon to help her stand and lead her out of the conference room.

Fury, meanwhile, was examining the splintered screen, all the other agents heading back to their duties until it was just him and Maria.

"So what are you thinking, Sir?" she asked him, standing off to the side to allow him space to think.

"I'm thinking…we're in boiling hot water," Fury said, finally turning to look at her. "Because the only thing this can mean…is that Grigori Drakoff is on the World Security Council."

XxX

The last of the HYDRA agents went down easily enough. While Clint kept him distracted, Steve was able to knock the weapon from his hands with his shield. As Clint closed in on him, arrow drawn, Steve approached from the side and delivered a nasty blow to his head, laying him out flat.

"Well, at least we got one of 'em," Steve said.

"Fury, we're clear down here. We've got one still alive and a bit of a mess for cleanup. What's going on with Natasha?"

"She's fine. He's gone. You'll probably want to get back here, though."

"Can do…though…on second thought…we might need medical down here," Clint said slowly as he glanced in Bucky's direction.

Something was wrong.

XxX

The twins were about a month overdue when Loki finally began to feel the first contractions. He had read about the process and he thought he understood what was going to happen. He would be fine. He could handle this…

…or so he'd thought. Then the pain really began…then the labor wore on for hours…and Loki remembered the screams of Asgardian women he had overheard…those who had cried, fainted, begged for mercy…died even. He had once thought them weak; after all, how bad could it really be? But now he was the one on the bed, screaming, struggling desperately to be delivered of this unbearable agony. The women of the court at least had the luxury of having their senses dulled by a healer's touch. He had no such luxury…no help. He was alone, and he had to be completely aware every minute. If he survived this, he knew he would never look down on another woman ever again.

Just when the trickster was certain he would die…that he would sleep and finally end the torture, his daughter was born, fittingly drawing a torrent of blood from his already wasted body.

Using a blade to cut the birth cord free, he gently pulled her into his arms to look at her. The baby girl's skin was blue, the color of a Jotunn…and she was cold…so very cold, the blood on her skin quickly congealing into rivulets of red ice as she wailed in displeasure.

"Hel," he whispered to her, leaning down to kiss her forehead. He would have loved several more hours to just hold her, to look at her, every little detail, but he was soon interrupted by another stabbing pain in his womb. Her brother was ready to be born.

The boy didn't take nearly as long as his sister. He came quickly, but his skin wasn't blue as Hel's was. It was ashen, lifeless.

"No," Loki whispered as he cut the little boy free of his body and pulled him into his arms. How could he stop this? What could he do? He had power, yes, but not for this. He had no concept of what it was to heal another person.

"Help! Help me!" he cried out reaching out to the only person he could…the only person who could help…

…and Bucky heard the call. He didn't understand what was happening, but he could feel the desperation as keenly as if it were his own.

He's dying! Help me! Save him!

He didn't know why, but it was the same feeling he got when he knew Steve was in danger…and he had always known, even when they were children. He didn't understand; he could see Steve now, standing with Clint, perfectly fine…but some part of his heart still cried out that he was going to die, so he gave what was asked. He gave his life, his magic, and his time, and never even asked why…

…and he paid for it.

Galaxies away, the ashen color of death was banished from the baby boy's skin and he finally cried out, wriggling weakly in Loki's arms as the trickster breathed a sigh of relief.

"Fenrir," he whispered, also giving the boy a kiss before picking his sister back up. As he held the two of them together, contact with Fenrir's warm skin gradually began to thaw Hel and she soon looked like her brother, except that her tuft of hair was brown where his was blonde. It wasn't long before the twins were nestled securely at their mother's breasts, enjoying their first meal.

Bucky, on the other hand, had fallen. Once the transfer was complete, he just dropped, unable to hold himself up any longer. Unable to move, barely even able to breathe, all he could think in his last few minutes of consciousness was, I can't be out of time yet! Not now! Not now! No…Steve…

Steve sprinted forward the moment he saw Bucky go down, crashing to his knees the moment he got to his side and gathering him in his arms.

"Bucky! Bucky, what's wrong?! Are you hurt?! Were you hit?!"

"Steve…Steve, I'm…sorry…" he whispered, trying to raise a hand, but unable to before his eyes slid shut.

"Bucky? Bucky?! James?!" he cried out, yanking his cowl off before fearfully pressing his ear to his fallen lover's chest.

Nothing. No heartbeat. No breath. Everything had gone horrifyingly silent.

"Oh, God…he's not breathing. He's not breathing!" he repeated helplessly as Clint ran up to them, pulling Bucky's lifeless body from Steve's arms and laying him flat, checking everything to be certain. Then the archer demanded Fury send medical before starting on chest compressions.

"Buck…no…don't do this to me. Not now…I can't lose you again," he whispered, taking Bucky's limp hand in his as Clint worked, squeezing the unresponsive fingers.

Clint continued to perform CPR, but it didn't seem to be doing anything. As the hopeless minutes passed, Steve began to feel tears pouring from his eyes and he did nothing to stop them.

"You God damn bastard! You can't just leave me like this!" he shouted, pounding a fist against the ground beside Bucky's head. "Bucky…please…come back…come back!"

You can't die! You just can't! Not like this! I can't live without you! I can't do it!

"Bucky, please…I love you…"

"Cap…I'm sorry…it's just no good."

XxX

(A/N) Well…you guys wanted Steve to find out. Now he knows.